How Bartz Was Received at Autodesk — 17 Years Ago

Yahoo is to name Autodesk CEO Carol Bartz to the top post, so now comes the time to digest what it means. TechCrunch noted the Internet company’s falling stock price since the announcement, while AllThingsD points out that Ms. Bartz, while a tech veteran, doesn’t have a media background.

Bartz

Time will tell how she does at Yahoo, but some of the things she’s likely to face there —
an influential founder, divisions between programmers and managers and a struggle between investing in new products and keeping investors happy — are ones she also dealt with at Autodesk, which tapped her for the leadership position nearly 17 years ago.

On May 28, 1992, the Journal published a front-page story on the move. Ms. Bartz’s status as the first woman outsider brought in to head a tech company (she’s also spoken with the WSJ about the importance of math education for girls, and the myth of work-life balance) was what many were chattering about, wrote G. Pascal Zachary, but the real issue, he added, was “whether an unruly clique of programmers at one of America’s most strangely run big companies will make her its latest managerial victim.”

Core members are contentious, eccentric free-thinkers who have had a way of devouring professional managers. They have often attacked each other and company executives, usually by sending “flame mail” — biting electronic letters. The outbursts sometimes have led to changes, and sometimes brought work to a halt. “The whole company is a theocracy of hackers,” says Charles M. Foundyller, president of Daratech Inc., a market research firm in Cambridge, Mass.

On Ms. Bartz’s management style:

She is regarded as a canny pick, particularly because she has experience managing rapid growth. She’s also a tough manager who got her first big promotion at Sun when she convinced top management that she could do a better job than her boss, who was on vacation. “I am not coming to Autodesk as a dictator,” she says. “But I am not a consensus manager in the extreme. I do not believe the best decision is a group grope.”

On Autodesk co-founder John Walker, who, like Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, handed over the day-to-day reins and later returned:

While Mr. Walker is intensely private about his personal life, he has had no qualms about airing Autodesk’s dirty laundry — or effusively describing his technical ideas. He published a book containing scores of confidential Autodesk memos, many written by himself. And he once unsuccessfully tried to interest journalist Hunter Thompson in chronicling the company’s rise. An obsessive writer who often revises a memo dozens of times before releasing it, he also has written a manuscript for a diet book, based on his experience of losing (and keeping off) about 100 pounds. … Despite Mr. Walker’s rough edges, employees were, and still are, drawn to him the way kids admire the baddest boy in class. He “is the cult hero of Autodesk,” says Joe Oakey, who directs the company’s charitable foundation. “He could stand up before a company meeting and say I hate you, and everyone would cheer.

On Autodesk’s schism between programmers and managers:

Sometimes, the paralysis was relatively innocuous, as when employees voted to delay the company’s move into a new office complex because they preferred an alternative site opposed by management. Other times, disagreements led to debates over how to lessen the company’s dependence on its AutoCad cash-cow — or even whether the company should try to diversify. The need for consensus led to many organizational quirks. Last year, for instance, the critical AutoCad division was assigned two general managers — one from the business side and one from Core — because neither was believed to have the experience to run it alone. Ms. Bartz has already changed that, appointing a new head of the division to whom the former co-general managers report.
The most bitter disputes arose between programmers and the company’s marketing and sales executives. “A tremendous schism” has existed for years between the two sides, says Mark Macgillivray, who has consulted for Autodesk on marketing issues. Core members and other programmers have simply refused to work on certain new products because they found them boring. Sometimes these are products that customers are clamoring for, such as a more memory-efficient version of AutoCad, which “the techies fought us tooth and nail on,” recalls one marketing executive.